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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24183919">The Adventures of Nil and Crawleigh</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rurouni_Idoru/pseuds/Rurouni_Idoru'>Rurouni_Idoru</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Nil Enters the Crowley-verse [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett, William the Antichrist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Crack Crossover, Gen, Humor, Is it really a crossover if it's the first draft of the story?, POV Outsider, Rated mostly for Nil's irredeemable mouth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 23:46:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,297</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24183919</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rurouni_Idoru/pseuds/Rurouni_Idoru</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Was there a gimmick she was missing here? Some kind of scheme she hadn’t figured out? She inspected the not-Crowley standing at her side, looking for some clue, but instead found only someone trying and failing not to look totally hapless.</p><p>Or, Crawleigh the unfortunate Earthbound demon makes a reluctant friend.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale &amp; Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale &amp; Crowley (Good Omens) &amp; Original Female Character(s), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crawleigh (William the Antichrist) &amp; Original Female Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Nil Enters the Crowley-verse [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1768276</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“No way. No way is that the thing you’re driving around in.” Nil tilted her head at the absolute clown car parked in front of her. Was there a gimmick she was missing here? Some kind of scheme she hadn’t figured out? She inspected the not-Crowley standing at her side, looking for some clue, but instead found only someone trying and failing not to look totally hapless.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t wind me up like that,” Crawleigh said, projecting an air of someone who had heard of confidence, and wanted to try it out, but wasn’t sure where to find it. “The other me had a lot to say about the fact that you don’t know anything about cars.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I </span>
  <em>
    <span>don’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> know anything about cars,” Nil confirmed, “but I am a goddamned </span>
  <em>
    <span>connoisseur</span>
  </em>
  <span> of garbage. I bet Crowley had a conniption fit when you pulled up in this embarrassment.” Probably had gotten into his huge black Scrooge-McDuck-mobile and parked it three streets over, in fear that this car’s crappiness might rub off on it. She pinched the bridge of her nose, sighed deeply, and then said, “Alright, fine, let’s go.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The next thing she was aware of was her skull colliding with his, which was not what she had thought would happen next.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck, ow, what the hell, dude?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I was going to open the door for you!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You were gonna — are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>kidding</span>
  </em>
  <span> me? Drive the damn car!” She rubbed the sore spot on her head that Crawleigh’s attempt at politeness had caused as he sheepishly scooted around to the other side of the car. “Gonna friggin’ </span>
  <em>
    <span>nice</span>
  </em>
  <span> us both into the recorporation line,” she muttered under her breath.</span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t like it,” she had said, when they introduced her to him. “No. It’s weird. Put him back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Look, somebody’s got to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed,” Crowley insisted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But look at him!” She did so, for emphasis. “It’s a minor demonic miracle he’s lasted this long.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, he can’t do those, either.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you shitting me?” Nil gave </span>
  <em>
    <span>Crawleigh</span>
  </em>
  <span> (because it wasn’t enough that he still had the stupid name, but it was also spelled like he’d been birthed by some PTA nightmare mother who insisted on seeing the manager at every opportunity) another appraising stare and found him wanting. “What’s even the point of him, then?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He means well,” Aziraphale supplied, not sounding like he fully accepted that as a good quality, either.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t have time to babysit your weird alternate-dimension lovechild, guys!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not — ” Nil silenced Crawleigh by mushing her hand into his uncanny soft-Crowley-face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Look at this,” she insisted. “Look at how he just lets me do anything to him. It’s like he got all of Aziraphale’s fluff with none of the fun bitchiness.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know for a fact,” Crowley said, steadfastly ignoring the mushing and protests, “that you have nothing but time. Just see him through his thing with Hastur, and then we’ll figure something out.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nobody asked me if I wanted a little brother,” Nil pouted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re not your blessed parents!” Crowley frowned. “Now do as I said, or I’m taking your phone away!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And mind how you go,” added Aziraphale.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>In a discussion of the William the Antichrist, the short story that would become Good Omens, someone opined that poor hapless Crawleigh needed a friend, and someone else suggested Nil would be a good candidate. So I wrote some silly commentfic, and then people asked what happened next, and I had more ideas, and now this thing exists. This isn't canon with Nil's main story, just a fun little side thing!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Don’t really like dealing with Hastur,” Crawleigh said.</p><p>“Well yeah, no shit, nobody likes dealing with Hastur. He’s a total chodestone and he smells terrible.” She nearly went off on a tangent about how Hastur also had no sense of humor, and criminally underappreciated what the internet had done with his animal aspect, but changed her mind upon glancing over at Crawleigh. He wasn’t just bitching about a coworker he hated like real-Crowley might have; he was <em> nervous</em>. </p><p>“He takes such a… delight in unpleasantness,” Crawleigh continued, eyes on the road. Oh, no, now she was starting to feel sorry for him. </p><p>“Look,” Nil said with a deep sigh, “the key thing about dealing with Hastur is this: Hastur is a moron.” This was usually a dangerous assumption for a demon to make about someone who technically outranked them, but Nil wasn’t assuming. “All you gotta do with him is spin things the right way, and either he’ll buy it or he’ll get confused and back off to save face.”</p><p>“How do you mean?”</p><p>“Like, okay. I wasn’t gonna say anything about this, because I imagine you want to hold on to some kind of demonic dignity, but this car smells overwhelmingly like baked goods.”</p><p>“That would be the biscuits,” Crawleigh answered. “Brought them over to the neighbor kids.”</p><p>“Mm,” Nil nodded seriously. “And why’d you do that?”</p><p>“Kids like biscuits,” Crawleigh said. “Kind of a silly question, really.” Nil fought the urge to roll her eyes and smack him on the side of his head.</p><p>“No,” she said, sternly. “You were <em> encouraging gluttony </em> in the hearts of impressionable children. And inspiring envy in everyone who could smell the aroma wafting out of your piece of shit car, but didn’t get to eat any. <em> That’s </em> the sort of thing you say to Hastur.”</p><p>“What, really?”</p><p>“Oh yeah, you can do that with anything. Works to some extent on Beelzebub and all them, even, if you know what you’re doing. Just recently, I did this thing, mostly to make myself laugh, right? But I wrote it off as a work thing by insisting it was going to inspire doubt in the existence of a just and loving God, and spread despair and misotheism.”</p><p>“What… what did you do?”</p><p>“This,” she said, pulling up a photo on her phone of a poster for an off-Broadway musical, displaying the title, the play’s insipid tagline, and a photo of three cast members. In the center, beneath a white-robed and slightly-unhinged-looking figure, read the words <em>“GARY BUSEY is GOD,”</em> which she was pretty sure must have struck some existential horror into at least a few people over the show's ten-week run. “Had to spend like twelve straight hours explaining my reasoning and who Gary Busey was to various bureaucrats Downstairs, but it was so worth it.” Crawleigh looked a little confused, but still mildly impressed, for the very brief moment he managed to turn his gaze from the road ahead of them. This was a far cry from how <em> Crowley </em> had reacted: He had been so incandescently proud that he’d immediately started teasing a horrified Aziraphale with offers to get them in to see previews. </p><p>Nil pocketed her phone again. “Anyway, that’s all you gotta do with Hastur. Just keep insisting that everything you do is just, unspeakably, spectacularly evil, because reasons, whether it is or not. He’s not smart enough to challenge you on it. Assuming we ever get there, that is. Not to, like, make the worst pun on the planet or whatever, but we are<em> crawling</em>, what gives?”</p><p>“It’s a Citroen 2CV,” Crawleigh responded, like that was supposed to mean anything to her. Was that special?</p><p>“So?”</p><p>“It can only do up to forty.” Nil blinked a few times.</p><p>“Forty… forty what?” This had to be some combination of British thing and Car thing she just wasn’t getting. “Not <em> forty miles an hour, </em> really?” She’d been in <em> pedicabs </em> that could do faster than that.</p><p>“Er,” Crawleigh answered, and ah,<em> there </em> was the resemblance.</p><p>“Ugh, we’re gonna end up being late,” she groaned. Which meant Hastur was going to be in a worse mood than usual. “Alright, new plan: forget the spin shit, just try your best to look imposing and let me do most of the talking. I can play Obsequious Peon well enough to get him out of our hair pretty quick.”</p><p>“I thought we weren’t meant to trust each other,” Crawleigh said, sounding unsure, like he’d made that mistake once or twice or several hundred times. Which was no wonder: he didn’t have the words <em> “exploit me, I’m so easy and gullible” </em> literally tattooed across his forehead, but he might as well have.</p><p>“Well, no, but you can trust <em> me</em>.” She realized as soon as she said it that this was the sort of thing a very untrustworthy person would say, before inevitably betraying the person she said it to. “What I mean is, there’s nothing in it for me if I screw you over, and it’d be a hollow victory anyway. And screw Hastur, he’s a dickhole, we’re united on that front.”</p><p>“Right. Well.” Crawleigh threw his shoulders back just a little. “Look imposing. Got it.” Nil sincerely doubted he had it, but as long as he kept his mouth mostly shut, it should be okay.</p><p>“And hey, if he gets really shitty with you, just remind him about what happened to Ligur.”</p><p>“Why, what happened to Ligur?”</p><p>“Ooh, I think Mom and Dad are gonna want to save <em> that </em>story for when you get a little older.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The musical Nil is claiming credit for is a real, actual piece of theater that existed in 2019, by the title of <i>Only Human</i>. According to reviews, not only was Gary Busey's performance as God the best part, but the actor/writer playing Lucifer clearly intended it as something of a vanity project, giving himself most of the musical numbers and a rock-star makeover. Of course Nil was involved in this.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was tense in the bookshop. This was hardly unanticipated: even for their lives, alternate-universe doppelgangers showing up with arrangements for clandestine meetings was kind of weird. Aziraphale had spent nearly the entire time fussing around the shop since Nil and Crawleigh had set out. He would call this “tidying,” but it was, at best, a lateral move in the clutter situation. It was almost enough to distract from Crowley’s restlessness: every five minutes or so was punctuated by a dramatic shift in position on the couch, or a veritable aria of tapping of either fingers or toes on some surface.</p><p>Aziraphale was the first to actually voice the concern that was already chokingly palpable regardless.</p><p>“Do you think they’ll be alright?” He’d spun around from facing the other direction entirely to look at Crowley as he asked it.</p><p>“Hey, c’mon, angel, where’s that stalwart faith?” Crowley said, as though he hadn’t spent the last minute and a half pioneering the field of finger-based couch-percussion while pretending to be engrossed in something on his phone.</p><p>“I have every faith in Nil, of course,” Aziraphale said, looking vaguely guilty.</p><p>Crowley guffawed. “Not him, though?”</p><p>“Well, he does seem a bit…” Aziraphale made some vague, wiggly hand gestures.</p><p>“Useless?”</p><p>“<em>Overly-earnest.</em>”</p><p>“Good-looking bloke, though,” Crowley grinned. Aziraphale rolled his eyes, but smiled as he did so.</p><p>“In certain lights, I suppose,” Aziraphale conceded. “I do have to wonder, you know, what circumstances led you to being so different from each other. He hardly seems to have any of your usual… <em> demonic flair.</em>”</p><p>“He didn’t recognize you,” Crowley shrugged. “Could be I need a nemesis to keep my skills sharp.”</p><p>Aziraphale said nothing, but tutted loudly and rolled his eyes again.</p><p>“Nah, I’m serious,” Crowley continued, shifting and sitting up. “Could be that without someone always thwarting, I’ve got no reason to keep up my wiling game, and I’d just slide right into haplessness. Maybe all this time, you’ve been the key to my successful career.”</p><p>“Oh, I’d like to think I’ve been a better influence on your life than that.”</p><p>“You’d like to think a lot of things that aren’t necessarily true,” Crowley retorted with a smirk.</p>
<hr/><p>Truth be told (though Nil certainly wasn’t about to do it), Nil was nervous about the whole thing. Hastur was an idiot, for sure, but he was also a sadistic bastard constantly looking for any excuse to set something on fire or dismember something or drown something in hungry maggots. Actual-Crowley had gotten Hastur off his back through sheer terrifying lunacy, that willingness to do any completely batshit wild-card thing he could think of that would get him back to his preferred lifestyle of peacefully taking a certain angel out to high-end restaurants and doing petty shit like gluing coins to sidewalks. And he could think of <em> a lot </em> of completely batshit wild-card things.</p><p>Crawleigh, on the other hand, gave off intense kicked-puppy vibes, apparently baked for kids, and drove this overgrown bumper car. The physical (and metaphysical) resemblance to the guy who’d melted Hastur’s partner might not cut it.</p><p><em> Sunglasses. </em> They needed to stick some damn designer sunglasses on him. That would help sell the illusion and camouflage that complete lack of sharp edges in Crawleigh’s gaze. Nil yanked open the glove compartment without a word.</p><p>“Hey, what’re you doing?” Crawleigh sounded a little bit affronted, but made no move to stop her, his hands still firmly on ten and two. A cascade of cassette tapes fell into Nil’s lap. <em> Cassette tapes, for Satan’s sake. </em> She picked one up to take a look, and saw that, whatever the original contents had been, the title had been scribbled over with a felt-tip pen and the words <em> “The Best of Queen” </em> had been written in the space remaining.</p><p>“That one’s on me, I shoulda known,” Nil muttered to herself, sifting through the pile in her lap to see similar modifications made to most of them. Some things were apparently multi-universal constants. “I’m looking for the secret to pulling this off,” she said to Crawleigh, reaching further into the glove compartment, deciding very firmly that she <em> would </em> find a pair of sunglasses in there that would probably cost an absurd amount of money, had they not been imagined into existence. Some things should be multi-universal constants, anyway. She fumbled in the dark past a crumpled, empty cigarette box, and her fingers brushed up against something thin and metallic. “Hell yeah,” she grunted, pulling the shades loose and sending another avalanche of tapes and miscellaneous crap bouncing off her knees.</p><p>“Sunglasses?”</p><p>
  <em> “Sunglasses!” </em>
</p><p>“It’s ten at night,” Crawleigh said. “What do we need sunglasses for?”</p><p>“For hiding the fact that you’re…” she looked him over again, trying very hard to come up with a charitable adjective, but finding only, “a <em> nice person.</em>” Crawleigh bristled a bit.</p><p>“I do try, you know,” he said, making the sort of face that the sunglasses would really go a long way toward hiding. “To do my job, I mean. Make people miserable. It’s just…”</p><p>“No you don’t,” Nil said, laughing. “You bake <em> cookies </em> for <em> children</em>. You went to open my door for me, like I’m a <em> lady </em> and you’re a <em> gentleman</em>, when you know the truth is that we’re both low-level eldritch horrors crammed into mostly-human-shaped bodies.”</p><p>“I<em> mean </em> to be a proper demon!” He flicked his eyes to her for a split second. “I really do mean to! But between one thing and another, I can never seem to really find the time to ruin souls and spread misery and all that.”</p><p>“I mean, the baking time probably cuts into that a lot.” Nil wasn’t even entirely sure if she was teasing here: baking was, in her limited experience, actually pretty time consuming, and everyone needed a hobby. She couldn’t begrudge Crawleigh his equivalent to her Twitter fights and 4chan dives. “But, look, personally, I think <em> trying </em> is overrated anyway. So maybe evil just isn’t your default mode.” She shrugged. “Whatever. None of my business.”</p><p>“Yeah?” He gripped the wheel a little tighter. “Not a… a conflict of interest?”</p><p>“Hey, sloth and apathy is a perfectly viable way to sin.” Nil started picking through the tapes, trying to find one that hadn’t yet been rebranded as <em> The Best of Queen. </em> “I’m not doing anything wrong, turning a blind eye. Er, anything <em> right, </em> I guess. Ugh, this job makes everyone sound like such dumb assholes. Is this actually still the Traveling Wilburys?”</p><p>“Probably not,” Crawleigh answered, and Nil shrugged and put it back in the pile. “Won’t wearing sunglasses in the dead of night make me look like kind of a… a…” He fumbled for the right term, and finally settled on, “flash bastard?”</p><p>“I’m counting on it, yeah,” Nil said. “Ooh, this copy of <em> Bat Out of Hell </em> isn’t all marked up, is this still what it’s supposed to be?”</p><p>“That one might be, actually,” Crawleigh said, emanating positivity and hopefulness and it was frankly kind of sickening. “Just grabbed it recently. Might as well give it a bash, anyway.” </p><p>“Well,<em> if I gotta be damned, </em> et cetera,” Nil grinned, popping the tape into the player.</p><p><em> “Is this the real life?” </em> asked the car’s sound system, in beautiful four-part harmony. <em> “Is this just fantasy?” </em></p><p>“Sorry,” Crawleigh groaned, and Nil did a double-take at how the word just slipped out of his mouth like it was nothing.</p><p>“Eh, it’s cool,” she replied. “Thinkin’ about Meat Loaf got me in the mood for something operatic anyway.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So, okay. Just to make sure I got the right idea here,” Nil said. “You got into some kind of accident?”</p><p>“The road was wet, and the traction on these tires isn’t… well, it’s not what it ought to be, but you know what new tires go for.” Which, right there was intriguing (Crawleigh’s apparent financial woes aside): The road <em> shouldn’t </em> have been wet. Nil had a lot of feelings about London’s miserable rainy weather, but it had held off for a week at this point. But obviously, the weather had been different, wherever Crawleigh had come from. “Spun out. A little scary, but nothing damaged, luckily.”</p><p>“I mean, other than you having apparently spun out into another dimension entirely, or whatever happened here.”</p><p>“Well, yes, but at the time, I couldn’t have been expected to know that,” Crawleigh said. “So I figured it would only be right to let Hastur know I’d been waylaid a little, and we’d need to reschedule.”</p><p>“Except we’re talking about two different Hasturs, here, right?” Nil held up a finger on each hand. “You were trying to keep your meeting with <em> your </em> Hastur, but you ended up contacting <em> our </em> Hastur.”</p><p>“He sounded the same, over the radio,” Crawleigh shrugged. “D’you think there’d really be such a big difference between them?” Nil tilted her head and looked pointedly at Crawleigh.</p><p>“Yeah, hi, hello, did you <em> meet </em> Crowley? The gothy dude in the sunglasses and skinny jeans who’s supposed to be the same person as you?”</p><p>“Point taken,” Crawleigh said. “It’s a little much, isn’t it? His whole… look?”</p><p>“Oh, no, it definitely is,” Nil agreed. “He’s a huge drama queen. But we can talk smack on Crowley later. What’d you say to our Hastur, thinking he was your Hastur?”</p><p>“I said I was having some car trouble,” Crawleigh said, and if Hastur was more knowledgeable about Crowley or his car or anything beyond petty office politics, <em> that </em> would have been a dead giveaway, “and could we possibly meet up later?”</p><p>“Which I imagine he was confused by,” Nil said, “given that he was actually <em> our </em> Hastur, who was expecting you were <em> our </em> Crowley, who very much does not do meetings anymore.”</p><p>“How’d he manage to get out of those, by the way?”</p><p>“Oh, he ruined the Apocalypse, big time. On purpose.”</p><p>“He <em> what? </em>”</p><p>“Well, him, and Aziraphale, and some humans were involved, and honestly I hear the Antichrist kid wasn’t even all that into the idea, but yeah.”</p><p>“So they just… let him go? No dismemberment, no stoats, nothing?”</p><p>“That’s the fucked-up part!” Nil leaned in conspiratorially. “They brought in the <em> Archangel Michael, </em> and set up a whole bathtub of holy water for him. And the motherfucker just stripped down to his underwear and <em> climbed in.</em>” Crawleigh gasped, to Nil’s delight. If nothing else, he was a good audience. “Splashed around and asked for a rubber ducky and everything! They didn’t know what to do with him after that. So they just kind of declared him <em> daemonium non grata </em> and moved on.”</p><p>“But <em> how </em> did he —”</p><p>“Oh, he won’t tell me. He won’t tell anyone. I mean, presumably Aziraphale knows, ‘cause they did the same thing with him and a plume of Hellfire.” Currently, Nil’s money was on some kind of obscure sex magic or the power of love or something. Which was a distraction from more pressing issues. “So, wait, y’said you asked Hastur if he wouldn’t mind meeting up later, just like that?”</p><p>“Just like that, yeah.”</p><p>“So you thought you were being, I dunno, Englishly polite and indirect, in asking him to reschedule, but what <em> he heard </em> was the infamous traitor asking to have a little kiki outta the clear blue sky.”</p><p>“What’s a little kiki?”</p><p>“That’s my bad, I shoulda guessed you haven’t spent as much time in gay bars as Crowley has. Like, a chit-chat. A li’l hang-out sesh.” Crawleigh made some incoherent noises, as though trying to understand a lot of stuff at once. “I’m deliberately undercutting the nature of this — never mind,” she continued, not wanting to get derailed trying to explicate all the nuances of her gallows humor. “So you did that, and then what?”</p><p>“I inspected the damage, and it looked okay, so I decided to go back to my flat. But the thing was, someone else was living in it.”</p><p>“Crowley,” Nil supplied, nodding.</p><p>“No,” Crawleigh said. “A very nice immigrant family, actually. Husband and wife with a baby on the way. I hope they can find a bigger place soon, that’s really not enough room for three of them.” Nil was dumbstruck, for a moment.</p><p>“Bwuh —” she began, and then hypercorrected for the possibility that maybe they were rubbing off on her, and shut up for a second. Then she remembered that not two minutes ago, Crawleigh had been complaining about tire prices, and so the rent on a luxury bachelor pad in Mayfair was probably out of the question. “But then how did you run into Crowley and Aziraphale?”</p><p>“Well, I was understandably a little anxious, by that point,” Crawleigh said, and Nil couldn’t tell if he was purposely underselling it or if he was genuinely so goddamn unlucky that his sense of scale was broken, and he didn’t register <em> nearly wrecking his car into an alternate universe </em> to be much more upsetting than the usual. “So I popped ‘round to the corner shop for some ciggies, and I nearly ran smack into them coming out of the cafe next door.”</p><p>“Seriously?”</p><p>“I know, I know, I shouldn’t smoke,” Crawleigh conceded, like <em> that </em> was what Nil was goggling at, “I must’ve tried to quit a thousand times by now, but it just never takes.”</p><p>“No, stupid,” Nil sighed, palming her face, “I meant, is that seriously how you ran into them?” It was so contrived, so <em> goofy</em>. But then, she chanced another glance at Crawleigh, in all his… Crawleigh-ness, and decided that might just be par for the course.</p><p>“They were a little, you know, freaked out, at first,” he continued, by way of answer, “I mean, obviously, we were all a little freaked out at first, it’s a pretty unusual thing to happen, isn’t it? But then they invited me back to the bookshop” — Nil internally called him a naive moron for going with them apparently unquestioningly — “and Aziraphale made me a nice cup of tea. Very kind fellow, actually.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Nil groaned, feeling totally defeated by this conversation. “Yeah, that’s Aziraphale for you.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When they pulled up to the dark, overgrown derelict lot that was apparently the established meeting place, they didn’t have to wait long. Crawleigh had barely shut the car off, futzing with the headlights, when Nil spotted his contact.</p><p>“Oop, here comes dat boi,” Nil said, craning her neck to see a pale, filthy shape skulking up to them through the window. She nudged Crawleigh with her elbow, and then opened her door and climbed out of the car. “Oh shit, whaddup!” she called to Hastur. “All hail Satan,” she added seriously, doing what she considered an Oscar-worthy performance as someone who didn’t hate her job and her boss and most of her coworkers.</p><p>“All hail Satan,” Hastur grumbled in response.</p><p>“Right, Satan,” Crawleigh added. Nil threw him a sidelong glance that she was pretty sure he couldn’t see, what with the sunglasses in the darkness and all, but sometimes giving someone a look was just about the principle of the thing.</p><p>“What d’you want, then, traitor?” Hastur snarled directly at Crawleigh, ignoring Nil entirely, as per usual.</p><p>“Oh, are we skipping the Deeds of the Day?” Nil padded around the front of the car to stand nearer to Crawleigh, both for ease of communication and because she knew if things got violent, Crawleigh would fold like a paper crane if Nil wasn’t within biting-and-punching range. “I mean, I got a pretty juicy one. Convinced a young man away from the priesthood and into a lifestyle of debauchery and lust.” Granted, the kid had only been considering priesthood as a panicked last resort because he was gay and scared of upsetting his religious family, and Nil was here defining “debauchery and lust” as “creating a Tinder account with intent to use it,” but still. </p><p>“And who’re you, then?” Like Nil had just appeared in a bolt from the blue, rather than having doled out the greetings in the first place.</p><p>“Nil,” she said, and then, more specifically, “by name and by reputation.” Because she was a consummate professional, she did <em> not </em>then go on to say, “We’ve met hundreds of times, actually, and I can’t stand you and frankly I think your position in the Hellish hierarchy is totally unearned and emblematic of everything that needs to be fixed about it,” but she certainly thought it loudly through her mask of pleasantly-unpleasant neutrality.</p><p>“What’re you doing here with this traitor filth?” </p><p>“There’s been kind of a mix-up,” she answered. “The rebel angel called me in, so I could explain.” She nodded at Crawleigh. “He’s in no state to.”</p><p>“And why,” Hastur said, suddenly every inch her insufferable superior, “are you in contact with an<em> angel? </em>” The secret to a good lie was always to build as much of it as possible out of the truth. Nil took a deep breath and prepared for an old-fashioned truth finessing.</p><p>“See, after the traitor demon Crowley was forcibly ejected from Our Master’s favor, I was put in charge of a lot of his accounts. And in what I’m sure is the surprise of the millenium, things were a <em> mess.</em>” Talking shit about Crowley was a widely-beloved pastime in Hell, and Nil figured it couldn’t hurt to pick up as many brownie points as possible in this conversation. “So I sought him out to properly settle everything. And apparently, since Heaven booted the angel, too, the pariahs have been flocking together. There was no way to get to Crowley without dealing with the angel.”</p><p>“You confronted Crowley and the angel at the same time?” Hastur regarded her with some expression Nil couldn’t be bothered to read, since it sure wasn’t glowing adulation. “You got a death wish?”</p><p>“I’m <em> very </em> dedicated to my work, sir,” she replied, her first whole-cloth lie of the evening. “Anyway, that made me the only denizen of Hell he’s had contact with, since… you know.” Flexing her dramatic muscles once more, she went shamefaced, casting her eyes to the ground as she toed at the dirt. “Guess the angel was able to track me down because of it, somehow. Must have let my guard down.” Which was one way to phrase it. Another, more accurate way would be to say that she’d deliberately given the two of them her number ages ago. Sure, it was, in fact, a surprise when Aziraphale called her, but that was only because all parties involved knew Nil generally disliked talking on the phone, so she rarely saw her contact name for Aziraphale’s landline (two emojis: an angel and a slice of cake) light up her phone screen. “So when <em> this </em>happened, the angel sought me out, to make sure it wasn’t one of ours.”</p><p>“What wasn’t one of ours?”</p><p>Nil gestured expansively at Crawleigh's entire person. “Something’s wrong with him! I mean, look at him. Like, really <em> look.”  </em></p><p>And yes, Crawleigh looked like you could spit in his eye and he’d apologize to you, and his dress sense was all wrong, but more than that: on a metaphysical level, he was essentially Crowley, but <em> wrong </em> somehow. Like a cheaply-made bootleg of a movie, where the color-grading was just a little off, and there was something distorted about the sound quality, and the packaging was made of odd plastic and weirdly-coated paper, and the subtitles were mis-timed. That was what Nil was exhorting Hastur to look at, not the fact that Crawleigh clearly had no clue what to do with his hair, in stark contrast to Crowley. Though the hair thing didn’t hurt, either.</p><p>Hastur leaned in just a little bit to examine Crawleigh better, but didn’t step any closer. Bafflingly, he took an appraising sniff of the air around him, as though he expected to get anything useful of “Crowley’s” scent through the overpowering miasma of his own stench. Crawleigh, credit to him, straightened up and made some kind of expression that Nil assumed was meant to be intimidating, but it just came off as bizarre and unreadable. But that was fine; bizarre and unreadable worked equally well for the angle they were working. Hastur narrowed his black froggy eyes and did not flinch, but did pull back just a little bit, in a way Nil was pretty sure she wasn’t meant to notice. He was posturing, so as not to look weak in front of Nil, a subordinate. Crawleigh was posturing so as not to give away his softness and get the shit murdered out of him. Nil was the only one behaving with any semblance of authenticity here, and even she was lying through her gapped teeth and trying desperately to ignore how much she wanted to pull her vape pen from her dimensional pocket and spark up right now.</p><p>“The cream-puff thought maybe this was some kind of belated punishment from Hell, or something, so he summoned me for information,” Nil continued. Her wording would evoke mental images of complex circles and candles and being dragged against her will, rather than a bookshop owner on a rotary phone asking her to please come over at her earliest convenience, and dropping his volume and cupping a hand over the receiver to confide in her that Crowley really was rather worried about this whole doppelganger thing, and that Nil’s presence would probably go a long way to reassuring him.</p><p>“You didn’t tell the angel to sod off?” Hastur looked phenomenally unimpressed, and Nil actually got a little pissed about it: she’d used the word <em> summoned, </em> for Antichrist’s sake. He didn’t know that meant a phone call interrupting her evening of watching cartoons rather than a corporeal yank through space by a powerful celestial entity. Was she expected to be <em> suicidally </em> dedicated to her job?</p><p>“Sir, I wouldn’t expect a powerful Duke of Hell like yourself to understand my apprehension,” which was laying it on a little thick, but then Hastur was a little thick, so whatever, “but the angel’s a <em> Principality, </em> and we’ve all heard the rumors about the flaming sword and the Hellfire resistance. To say nothing of what we all know Crowley’s capable of.” She hazarded a glance at Crawleigh, who was attempting a cool lean against the hood of his car. It wasn’t great, but it was an effort, Nil supposed. “I’m a rank-and-file nothing demon, I didn’t think the odds were in my favor,” she said.</p><p>“Mmmn,” grumbled Hastur, evidently realizing for the first time that maybe it would be expecting a little much out of her, to ask why she didn’t directly challenge a notorious traitor who had obliterated his own kind before and who Hastur himself was clearly somewhat frightened of, or his friend the literal avenging angel.</p><p>“Before they called me over there, his brain damage or whatever is wrong with him convinced him he had a meeting to keep with you, for some reason. He thought he was doing you a favor, calling you out here.” Perfect, a nice segue back into technical truths. “I think the angel was afraid of what you’d do to him in this state, so he sent me along too. I… I couldn’t really refuse.” Hastur eyed her up and down now, regarding her like she was something that a more discerning demon might scrape off their shoe, but that Hastur would obviously just leave there.</p><p>“You didn’t tell them anything else?” he asked, in a tone that made it clear it wasn’t a multiple choice question. “Any leaks that need… <em> plugging? </em>”</p><p>“I’m not lowly enough to be trusted with any kind of sensitive information anyway,” she demurred, though this hardly stopped her from acquiring as much sensitive information as possible, “but no, of course not, I wouldn’t let those traitors get anything out of me. I have <em> some </em> pride.” As though she hadn’t turned up within an hour of Aziraphale’s call, bearing a pound cake and a bottle of blackberry schnapps, and declaring that those gifts bought her the right to bitch about the situation as much as she wanted.</p><p>Hastur gave Crawleigh another sneering once-over. “What <em> is </em> wrong with him, then?”</p><p>“Do I give a shit?” Nil shrugged. “We didn’t violate any treaties or non-interference agreements, so those self-righteous pigeons Upstairs can’t touch us, and now on top of that, the traitor might be broken or something. That’s a win all around in my book.” Crawleigh made a weird grunty noise that Nil figured was either meant to be a growl of anger about the circumstances or a groan of despair at having been so thoroughly bested. In light of that, Nil was feeling very good about her decision to tell Hastur there was something wrong with him. </p><p>She could see the finish line, and she was gearing up to figure out how to most gracefully close out this little interaction, when something terrible happened: Hastur started to grin.</p><p>“You see, Zilch,” he began, and Nil knew it wasn’t worth it to correct him, “that’s what separates your lot from the lower echelons.” Nil felt a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the weather. “Here you have a despicable traitor in a vulnerable position,” Hastur continued, raising a hand in front of him, “and you nearly just cut him loose. That’s no way to get promoted.” And normally, Nil would have wanted to protest that who was promoted in Hell had nothing to do with innovation or talent, or else Hastur wouldn’t have a title. But Hastur conjuring fire around his hand and widening his grin was pretty fucking far from normal, so the thought died in favor of a steady chant of <em> “oh shit, oh fuck” </em> in Nil’s head. Crawleigh was still, clearly, trying his best to follow her instructions to look imposing, but his best was unfortunately really, really shitty, and he couldn’t stop himself from staggering backward as Hastur turned his increasingly-manic gaze to him. “Let’s see what <em> else </em> you can survive, eh?” Nil had to think fast, which was not necessarily her strong suit. It was Crowley’s strong suit, ironically. Which did give her an idea, actually, although it was a <em> very stupid </em> idea, but it was either that stupid idea or stare like a dumbass while Hastur killed Crawleigh, so… </p><p>“Do you miss him, Duke Hastur?” Nil had blurted it, pointedly loudly, before she realized she was saying it out loud. Hastur froze.</p><p>“What?” Nil swallowed, because apparently she was doing this, and turned her gaze as steely and dangerous as possible.</p><p>“Do you <em> miss </em> Duke Ligur,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Because if you do not <em> slow your fuckin’ roll</em>, I guarantee you’re gonna end up joining him.”</p><p>“Is that a threat, fledgling?” Shit, it did sound like a threat, didn’t it? She hadn’t exactly managed to keep the disdain out of her voice, there.</p><p>“No, your Disgrace,” she said, spreading her hands defensively. “It’s just — we still don’t know what’s wrong with him, do we wanna take a chance that he’s gotten <em> less </em>crazy?”</p><p>“I could do anything,” Crawleigh agreed, and Nil tried very hard to gag him using only her mind. Hastur looked unconvinced, hand still wreathed in flame.</p><p>Fuck it, Nil decided. Time to change tactics. “Duke Hastur, <em> please,</em>” she whispered, stepping forward just a bit closer. “I’m not — They’ve put me in a compromising position.” </p><p>Part of the reason Nil had gone with the female body, when given the choice, was that humans tended to assume that women were less capable than men, which was pretty great camouflage for her chaos-sowing. It also meant that they would often assume some kind of damsel-in-distress thing was going on when she claimed to need help, especially when she used phrases like <em> “compromising position.”  </em>None of this, of course, was of any effect on Hastur, who wouldn’t recognize a human social norm if it walked up to him wearing a nametag, but it was what Nil had the most practice with, and so what she fell back on most comfortably.</p><p>“The <em> angel</em>, the renegade Principality,” she continued, throwing in a couple of panicked glances around for effect, “I think he might have tailed us or something. He’s probably hiding in the shadows with a Super-Soaker!”</p><p>“With a what?”</p><p>“Fuck’s sake — a <em> water gun! </em> To shoot streams of water over long distances!” Maybe if Hastur had bothered to be any good at his <em> actual goddamned job </em> within the last century, Nil did not say, he wouldn’t require the explanation. Judging by the expression on Hastur’s face, though, it seemed to have landed.</p><p>“Water,” he repeated, now evidently looking for any sign of Aziraphale’s presence.</p><p>“Look, whatever they wanted with you, they changed their minds, and they sent me over to make sure you didn’t follow up about it. As leverage.”</p><p>“A hostage,” Hastur mumbled.</p><p>“Shh!” Nil’s eyes darted to Crawleigh. Had she actually been trying to avoid his suspicion, she could have, easily, but instead, she deliberately let her false-panic linger just a little too long on her face.</p><p>“You alright, Nil?” Crawleigh asked, and Nil desperately hoped Hastur would mistake the sound of genuine concern in his voice for a note of menacing nonchalance.</p><p>“Fine,” she squeaked, internally rehearsing the acceptance speech for the award this performance deserved.</p><p>“You sure? You seem jumpy all of a sudden.” And then, Crawleigh, the beautiful blessed idiot, reached out to put a comforting hand on her arm. Perfect. Nil made a show of flinching, as though his touch burned. He spooked like a nervous foal, looking horror-struck by her reaction.</p><p>“I’m <em> fine!</em>” Nil repeated hastily, turning her head just so, to ensure that one of her eyes was totally hidden from Hastur’s view when she winked it at Crawleigh. For a split-second, she half-expected that he would worriedly ask her what was wrong with her eye, but instead fate threw her a bone and he appeared to take the hint.</p><p>“Well,” he mumbled, and she could freaking <em> see him </em> remembering her instructions to try and look imposing, “that’s good! Wouldn’t want to have to… make you less fine!” Nil tried not to wince.</p><p>Whether he’d admit it or not, Nil was willing to bet that Hastur was likely feeling some kind of way about having watched what happened to Ligur. And he probably wasn’t keen to watch it happen again, after that, not if it wasn’t his own doing and done to Crowley in specific. If nothing else, it would hurt his pride, if he was made to once again just stand by and watch an enemy obliterate another demon with holy water. He might not have been the brightest candle on the sacrificial altar, but he had to know how that would make him look.</p><p>In that case, the worst he could do to Nil was discorporate her, or maybe torture her a little. Big deal. Nil had been tortured and discorporated before. It was annoying, sure, but better her than Crawleigh, who would crumble like a pastry if he got stuck in Hell proper.</p><p>She would have to double down.</p><p>“N-no, sir, Mister Traitor Demon Crowley, sir,” Nil shouted, falling to her knees. “Please don’t have your pet angel kill me!” Hopefully before Hastur could notice the shock on Crawleigh’s face, Nil stole his attention. “Please, Duke Hastur! Don’t let him — !”</p><p>“What’s the meaning of this?” Hastur was getting a little hysterical now. “Get up off the ground!” Nil crawled a little and grasped at the charred and torn hem of Hastur’s trenchcoat, making a mental note to use some hand sanitizer if she survived all this.</p><p>“Sir, please, I don’t want to be made extinct, just let him go!” </p><p>“This is low, even for you,” Hastur shouted at Crawleigh as Nil faked a terrified tremble at their feet. “First one wasn’t enough for you, you lunatic? Now you’re using weaklings like this as bargaining chips?” She sobbed pathetically, just to sell it a little more.</p><p>“I — ” Luckily, whatever thought Crawleigh had been about to stammer out, he seemed to reconsider it.</p><p>“Fine,” Hastur spat, “you can go this time. Call off your angel. But you can’t watch each other’s backs all the time!” Nil had to fake a shudder wracking her body to cover for her involuntary snicker. “And you,” he snarled at Nil, “Capitulating to the traitor like that! Shows weakness. <em> Cowardice. </em> You’ve earned whatever they do to you now. I’ll remember you. If you survive, that is.” And with that, Hastur skulked off and sunk into the dirt, back to Hell in the filthiest, least-convenient way possible, because some people just refused to learn.</p><p>“Yeah, I doubt it, asshole,” Nil muttered in response to his parting shot once she was sure he was out of earshot. “Didn’t remember me the first seven hundred or so times we met, probably not gonna start now.” She got to her feet and started dusting the dirt off the knees of her jeans.</p><p>“Are you alright?” Crawleigh immediately blurted. “How did you— that was —”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, tell me how great I am later,” she said, giving Crawleigh a light shove on the shoulder. “Right now, we should get out of here in case he changes his mind and decides he hasn’t set enough fires in our vicinity.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“He seemed <em> awfully </em> cross with me,” Crawleigh said, as he fell into the driver’s seat and pulled the sunglasses off his face.</p>
<p>“Yeah, and yet you’re still alive, so, y’know, small victories.” Nil settled into the passenger seat and heaved a sigh.</p>
<p>“What’d I do, to get him so upset with me?”</p>
<p>“<em>You </em> didn’t do anything,” Nil said. “<em>Crowley </em>… Let’s just say Crowley did plenty and leave it there.”</p>
<p>“Oh, good.” Crawleigh, luckily, seemed perfectly content not to have any details on what his counterpart had done to earn Hastur’s ire. “I was starting to worry that maybe my offers were being taken the wrong way.”</p>
<p>“Offers,” Nil repeated, deadpan.</p>
<p>“You know, ‘next time you’re in town we should go back to mine,’ ‘maybe we could get coffee some time,’ that sort of thing. Just, things you say to your co-workers.” Nil rubbed at her temples.</p>
<p>“No, those are things<em> humans </em> say to their human co-workers. Things <em> we </em> say to <em> our </em> co-workers include ‘all hail Satan, our Dark Lord and Master,’ and ‘I’d kill you and take credit for your work given half a chance.’ Do not invite Dukes of Hell back to your home. They will be extremely shitty houseguests.”</p>
<p>“Obviously I didn’t think they would ever <em> accept,</em>” Crawleigh said, defensively, as he turned the key in the ignition. “They’re just… social niceties!”</p>
<p>“We’re not supposed to do social niceties,” Nil said. “We’re not supposed to do any kind of niceties! Like I said, I don’t personally care if you wanna go around being kind to people, but you gotta try to keep it under your hat around the others from Downstairs, or they’ll eat you alive.” Literally, in some cases. </p>
<p>“Right,” Crawleigh nodded, evidently thoroughly chastised, as he started driving. And Nil didn’t feel bad for what she’d said, because she’d meant all of it. But he had managed not to get either of them killed or even maimed, and that wasn’t nothing, and Nil thought maybe he’d earned a reward.</p>
<p>“Oh, look what I found,” she said, plunging her fingers into the inch-deep pockets of her jeans and pulling out one of those old car cassette adapter things. “Incredible technology to bring you into the fast-paced world of 1995!” Nil ejected the former <em> Bat Out Of Hell </em> cassette (<em>Best Out Of Queen</em><em>,</em> now?) and popped the adapter into the tape deck. “Maybe you can hang on to this and utilize it to play something that <em> doesn’t </em> metaphysically warp into the same twenty-or-so tracks!”</p>
<p>“Oh, brilliant,” Crawleigh said. “I’ve been meaning to pick up one of those, but no one seems to sell them anymore.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’m a regular Radio Shack,” Nil said, plugging the audio jack into her phone and queuing up some Meat Loaf, since she’d gotten all excited earlier. Crawleigh cleared his throat in maybe the least subtle way Nil had ever seen.</p>
<p>“You know,” he said, “I know you didn't actually have that in your pocket the whole time.”</p>
<p>“That's kind of a weird way to confess to looking at my ass,” Nil smirked, and, as anticipated, Crawleigh immediately started stammering and probably blushing, though it was hard to tell with the dome light off.</p>
<p>“No, I wasn't — I didn’t —”</p>
<p>“I know you weren’t, dipshit,” Nil said. “Just wanted to make you freak out. Mission accomplished.”</p>
<p>“I mean, I know the pockets on women's jeans are crap.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” She guessed that Crawleigh was not, in any universe, responsible for that.</p>
<p>“My neighbor's complained about it to me,” he continued clarifying, for some reason. “The kids' mum.”</p>
<p>“Don't care why you know.”</p>
<p>“Well, but what I mean is, that you obviously conjured the adapter.”</p>
<p>“Good fuckin' solve, Sherlock Holmes,” Nil grinned. Now she was getting somewhat curious about where this was going, which of course was Crawleigh's cue to get nervous and clam up for a few beats.</p>
<p>“It's only,” Crawleigh finally said, just when Nil was starting to think he was dropping the thread, “Makes me that maybe you're a nice person, too.”</p>
<p><em> “Ughhhh,” </em> Nil said automatically. She waved a hand at him. “Don't — I don't know you well enough to be cool with you using that kinda language about me.”</p>
<p>“Alright,” Crawleigh replied, but she could hear the faintest ghost of a smug grin in his voice. It figured that <em> this </em> was where he decided to show some kind of resemblance to Crowley personality-wise.</p>
<p>“Little shit,” Nil muttered. Then, mercifully, the conversation was successfully slaughtered by the instrumental intro ending, giving way to Meat Loaf’s melodramatic vocals.</p>
<p>It was at this point that Nil made an interesting discovery: Apparently, an alternate-universe version of Crowley who was not so wedded to his image as a cool guy (and who had clearly never cultivated one to begin with) was a lot more willing to make a complete jackass of himself and join Nil in singing along.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>By the time they pulled up in front of the bookshop, they were both in full-on karaoke superstar mode, howling the lyrics at the top of their lungs complete with air guitar where appropriate. Nil pulled the audio jack from her phone and they both finished the current verse in chorus as they climbed out of the car.</p><p>
  <em> “And LIKE A SINNER! BEFORE! THE GATES OF HEAVEN I’LL COME CRAWLIN’ ON BACK TOOO YOUUUU!” </em>
</p><p>“Oi, shut the hell up,” offered a passerby. Nil immediately tripped him and ascended the stoop, paying no attention to Crawleigh doubling back to help him up and apologize for her. </p><p>“Mister Fell,” Nil called brightly as she flung open the bookshop door, “Alcohol please! To celebrate our triumphant return!”</p><p>“You’re both still alive!” She heard Aziraphale’s smile before she saw it. “Thank goodness!”</p><p>“What, no, don’t thank goodness,” Nil protested, “<em>goodness </em> is what got him into trouble in the first place!”</p><p>“How was Hastur?” Crowley was clearly trying for casual, but Nil could read that restless couch-shifting by now.</p><p>“Same as always,” Nil answered. “Dumb as rocks, full of wrath, <em> really </em> wants to see you viciously murdered. Side note, we might have to get Aziraphale a Super-Soaker now, to keep up appearances.”</p><p>“I’ll get on eBay,” Crowley grinned.</p><p>“I thought eBay only sold antiques,” Aziraphale said, setting out some glasses and the bottle of blackberry schnapps Nil had brought with her.</p><p>“Just because you only use it to buy old books doesn’t mean that’s all they sell, no,” Crowley said indulgently.</p><p>“Wouldn’t be a barrier anyway,” Nil pointed out, parking her ass on an accent table. “The good ones <em> are </em> damn near antiques. Anyway, it coulda gone worse out there.”</p><p>“It could have gone better, too,” Crawleigh said as Aziraphale pressed a glass into his hand. “Oh, thank you, that’s very nice of you.”</p><p>“Yeah, I mean, there was kind of a close call,” Nil admitted, “I did think one or both of us might get a <em> little bit </em> killed for a second there, but it all turned out okay.”</p><p>“How exactly,” Aziraphale asked, “does one get ‘a little bit killed’?”</p><p>“Well I wouldn’t know, ‘cause I avoided it,” Nil grinned.</p><p>“It was incredible,” Crawleigh enthused as he took a seat in an actual chair. “She made up a bunch of stuff, and then Hastur tried to kill me, so she threatened him and then made a complete prat of herself to get us both out of it.”</p><p>“If I knew you were gonna tell the story like that,” Nil said, “I woulda let Hastur do what he wanted to you.”</p><p>“No, I’m impressed! I’ve never seen anyone lie like that before!”</p><p>“Okay, well, you’re a demon,” Nil reasoned, “so I’m gonna say you probably have, but you’re just gullible enough that you didn’t realize it.”</p><p>“Well,” Crawleigh said, “I’ve definitely never seen anyone lie like that on my behalf, anyway.” He gave her a shy smile and she nearly kicked him in his shin, before reasoning that a blow like that might discorporate him. Instead, she quickly directed her ire at the shit-eating grin Crowley was giving her.</p><p>“Oh, what. What’s that face about?”</p><p>“What face?” Crowley asked in the worst approximation of innocence Nil had ever seen, and she’d done some pretty bad ones herself. “This face? Just the face I morphed into when I went bipedal, nothing special.”</p><p>“Aziraphale,” Nil said, waving her hand out toward the bottle in Aziraphale’s hand, “tell him he can’t drink my schnapps if he’s gonna be a shit.”</p><p>“I just think,” Crowley said, “that you put a lot of work into making sure Crawleigh here didn’t get hurt.”</p><p>“Oh, go to Hell,” Nil said, breaking into a grin of her own. “Anyway, I told Hastur he was you, but messed-up, so Hastur would think he was, you know. An unkillable psychopath.”</p><p>“Is <em> that </em> the reputation he has down there?” Aziraphale said lightly, with just a hint of that smug little smile Nil would call <em> devilish </em> if she didn’t know better.</p><p>“After the trial, <em> shit </em> yeah,” Nil said, and Aziraphale full-on actually smirked and shared one of those Capital-letter Knowing Looks with Crowley. Nil fought down the urge to jeer at the two of them to <em> just make out already </em> with the very real possibility that they might do it.</p><p>“I’m glad it worked,” Crawleigh said, like the entire subtext of everything going on had flown right over his head. “Not all that keen on getting back to the office if I can avoid it, really.” He said this as though he were somewhat ashamed, like he was not expressing a completely reasonable desire to avoid going to Hell, to two other demons who also clearly did not want to be there. Nil rolled her eyes.</p><p>“What, are you not an enormous teacher’s pet, like this one?” She nodded her head toward Crowley, who immediately shifted uncomfortably.</p><p>“Wasn’t a teacher’s pet, stop it,” he mumbled.</p><p>“A <em>teacher’s pet,</em>” Crawleigh repeated with a stunned, mirthless laugh. “No, nothing like that. Never. Certainly not after Atlantis.” Nil’s first instinct was to demand to know what happened with Atlantis that would have summarily removed Crawleigh from the running of favorite, but Crowley beat her with a somewhat more interesting question.</p><p>“What happened after Atlantis?”</p><p>“Well, I got suspended, for a start.”</p><p>“That could have been a blessing in disguise,” Aziraphale offered hopefully. “Get you out of Hell, after all.” Nil winced; she didn’t have the heart to disabuse Aziraphale of his innocent notion of what a <em> suspension </em> meant in Hell.</p><p>“No, I mean, physically,” Crawleigh corrected, so she didn’t have to. “Above a flaming cesspit.” Aziraphale blanched, but Nil and Crowley both just nodded along. “And the partial dismemberment, of course…”</p><p>“Well, of course,” Crowley said.</p><p>“Goes without saying,” Nil grumbled.</p><p>“And the internal stoats…”</p><p>“Oof, <em> stoats,</em>” Nil winced again, in sympathy. “Vicious little shits.”</p><p>“I never got stoats,” Crowley commented mildly.</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Never,” Crowley said. “I’ve had rats and mice, a lot of various bugs and things, weird little fishes that one time, but never stoats.”</p><p>“See,” Nil said, “you were <em> totally </em> a teacher’s pet. All that fuckin’ around, and you never even got the stoat treatment.”</p><p>“But mostly,” Crawleigh continued, “I was Earthbound in human form until I’m told otherwise.”</p><p>“Is that why you can’t do miracles?” Nil asked. Crawleigh nodded. “Oh, man, I thought you were just kinda shit at it. Wait, so, human? Like,<em> human </em> human? With all that… needing to eat and sleep and what all?”</p><p>“Other than the not aging, basically, yes.”</p><p>“Eugh. Yikes.” Nil grimaced and thought about it for another moment. “But, like, the weird involuntary bodily responses to external stimuli and everything? No temperature regulation? <em> Capitalism? </em>”</p><p>“The whole package, yeah.”</p><p>“Fuck me, no wonder you can’t get any tempting done,” Nil mumbled. Here he was having to waste, what, four to ten hours being unconscious every couple of days? Needing to stop to feed his body to make it function? Poor bastard had been set up for failure from the start.</p><p>“Birds!” Crowley exclaimed, apropos of nothing. “Been pecked by birds a fair few times, too. Wasn’t wild about that.”</p><p>“<em>Everybody’s </em> been pecked by birds, Crowley!” Nil crossed her arms. “Quit trying to act like you weren’t fawned over. It’s insensitive, in front of this poor schlemiel,” she added, with a gesture to Crawleigh. “Oh, shit, wait, does that mean you have to…” Nil looked around, as if there might be someone listening besides the three other people-shaped beings in the very-closed bookshop, and dropped her voice to a near whisper. “D’you have to do the <em> bathroom stuff, </em> too?”</p><p>“‘Course I do,” Crawleigh said, like it was a dumb question. Nil shuddered in disgust.</p><p>“Gyuh, <em> nasty,</em>” she said, wiggling her arms to try and clear the shivery feeling from them. “Can you imagine?” She threw pleading looks at Crowley, who did at least have the decency to look properly somber at the thought, and Aziraphale, who had a far-off look in his eye that Nil suspected meant he might still be processing the stoat thing. Still, she was pretty sure that counted as agreement. “I don’t care <em> what </em> happened with Atlantis, that’s some whole new level of bastardry. I can’t believe he’d — well, no, okay, unfortunately, I can totally believe he’d pull some shit like that. But I’m still appalled!”</p><p>“It’s not so bad, most of the time,” Crawleigh said tepidly.</p><p>“Yeah, if they didn’t expect you to still keep pulling the same kind of numbers!”</p><p>“Oh, here she goes,” Crowley said, doing a piss-poor job of pretending it wasn’t fond. “About to break into a verse of <em> L’Internationale.</em>”</p><p>“Hey, I’m not the one who literally turned this chump into one of <em> les damnés de la terre, </em> okay?” Nil crossed her arms. “Punishment’s one thing, but this is deliberate destabilization! He’s being made to fail and then scolded for losing at a rigged game!”</p><p>“I’m not being —,” Crawleigh started, but then perked up, head tilting, like a puppy. “Wait, am I?”</p><p>“You completely are,” Nil said. “Every time I think I’ve found everything there is to be mad about! There’s no way you’ve done anything bad enough to earn that kind of treatment.”</p><p>“That’s kind of the point, I expect,” Crowley mumbled.</p><p>“No, you know what I mean,” Nil said. “Like, I definitely buy that he’s fucked up big, but not enough to justify that. He’s too…” She made a vague, fiddly hand gesture. “Like a bunny made out of pie.”</p><p>“I can’t tell if that’s insulting or not,” Crawleigh said.</p><p>“Professional sabotage,” Nil continued. “That’s what this is. Like, that’d be an appropriate disciplinary measure for somebody like Hastur, not you!”</p><p>“How d’you mean?” asked Crawleigh.</p><p>“Hastur is operating on such an outdated understanding of humans! He needs some remedial education. His go-to move is still, 'bleurgh I tempted a priest, now kiss my ass about how wretchedly evil I am,' it's embarrassing!” </p><p>Crowley cackled into his tumbler and chimed in, “Got a real knack for finding potential saints, that one.”</p><p>“Like, sure, okay, back in the day, that did gangbusters,” Nil conceded. “Communities were smaller, priests were moral leaders. But things don't work like that anymore, social mores are totally different! Nowadays, if a man of the cloth decides to abandon his vows so he can go have sex with a consenting adult human woman, everyone's just like, ‘good for him’! Literally nobody gives a shit! That's — fuck me, you know what that is? That's a gender-flipped version of <em> The Sound of Music</em>, but without the Nazis!” A stunned, horrified silence fell over the bookshop for a moment. It might be sobering, if any of them had had time to get drunk yet.</p><p>“Gosh, I’d never thought about it like that,” Crawleigh said softly. “Hastur’s always seemed pretty on the ball to me, evil-wise. All that… poisoning children and corrupting virgins and whatever it was he said about Wembley Stadium.”</p><p>“Hang on, hang on,” Crowley interrupted. “Wembley Stadium?”</p><p>“Yeah, something about… he filled it up with souls, or he could or something? It was all very dramatic.”</p><p>Crowley and Nil shared a significant, alarmed look.</p><p>“What’s wrong?”</p><p>Nil’s gaze bored into Crawleigh now. “Did he — <em> your Hastur, </em> did he specifically namecheck Wembley Stadium?”</p><p>“I think so, why?”</p><p>“Because Hastur shouldn’t know what Wembley Stadium even <em> is</em>.”</p><p>“It’s a national landmark,” Aziraphale protested.</p><p>Crowley held up a dismissive hand. “Doesn’t matter, angel. Hastur’s been doing most of his work remotely since… hell, since before gaslight, I think. Barely even knows what a car is.”</p><p>“You say the same thing about Nil.”</p><p>“Nil’s a Formula One racer compared to Hastur.”</p><p>“There’s two pedals, and one makes the car go, and the other makes it stop,” Nil announced proudly, to demonstrate her massive advantage over Hastur in car knowledge.</p><p>“Oh, well, everyone knows that,” Aziraphale said, rolling his eyes.</p><p><em> “Hastur doesn’t,” </em> Nil and Crowley both said in chorus. Nil turned to look at Crawleigh again, leaning in just a little closer, investigating.</p><p>“Are you telling me your Hastur actually knows things?” She hunched her shoulders seriously, like she was trying to hunker herself down. “You’re being deliberately destabilized at your job, and on top of that you have to answer to a Hastur who actually has two braincells to rub together?”</p><p>“Ligur was always the smart one of that pair,” Crowley said.</p><p>“Oh, he’s worse,” Crawleigh said. “Always on about sending people careening off cliffs, or, putting glass in food, or, or VAT form whatever-it-is.”</p><p>Crowley slammed his glass down on the coffee table. “That bastard,” he snarled, as Aziraphale discreetly slid a coaster under the glass he’d just used as dramatic punctuation, “value-added tax was <em> mine</em>, I’ll kill him!”</p><p>“A little late for that one,” Nil mumbled into her schnapps, scooting just a few inches closer to Aziraphale, just in case. Mercifully, neither Crowley nor Crawleigh seemed to hear her.</p><p>“Not in <em> his </em> world, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, immediately validating Nil’s scoot-decision. “Crawleigh is your counterpart, and I daresay he doesn’t seem as interested in infrastructure as you are.”</p><p>“Oh, shit,” Nil said, “Crawleigh, who did the M25?”</p><p>“Er, Malphas.”</p><p><em> “Malphas!” </em> Crowley repeated incredulously.</p><p>“Don’t see what the big deal was, anyway,” Crawleigh shrugged. “So he noticed the original plans would resemble the dread sigil <em> odegra </em> with a few tweaks <em> . </em> I said the same thing, when he showed me them, and he got all shirty with me and told me how <em> obvious </em> that was, anybody with eyes could see that! No way to make friends around the office, if you ask me.”</p><p>Crowley brought his fist to his mouth and bit down on it. He looked like he might implode.</p><p>“Crawleigh,” Nil sighed. Someone had to break it to him, and Crowley was clearly in the middle of dying. “Malphas didn’t notice that. <em> You </em> noticed that, and then he pretended he noticed it first so he could take credit for your idea.”</p><p>“I’m sure your alterations were much more efficient than Malphas’,” Aziraphale said, reaching out to rub and pat Crowley’s shoulder.</p><p>“‘Course they were,” Crowley grumbled. “Malphas is a tit. Probably completely butchered the underlying numerology.” </p><p>“The definition of the phrase <em> failing upwards,</em>” Nil agreed. “Or, y'know, downwards, in this case.” She almost argued with Crowley’s phrasing: Malphas wasn’t a tit, because people <em> liked </em>tits. (This was, in fact, another reason Nil had gone with the female body, when given the choice.)</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Silently, Crawleigh drained his glass, no longer meeting anybody’s eyes. He was obviously miserably embarrassed by this revelation. Which, sure, Nil could understand. After all this time being deliberately set up to humiliate himself, he’d apparently finally had a single properly-demonic thought flit into his head, only for some beaky asshole to snatch it before he knew what gold he had, and turn it into one of Hell’s proudest (if oft-misunderstood) modern accomplishments.</p><p>Shit sucked ass.</p><p>Crawleigh regarded the cut-crystal bottom of the empty glass for a moment before looking up at Aziraphale. “Schnapps always goes right through me. Could you show me where to find the loo?”</p><p>“Oh, of course,” Aziraphale smiled, infinitely gentle, and presumably familiar enough with Hellish office politics by now to realize what Crawleigh was grappling with. “It’s right this way, let me show you.” He touched Crawleigh’s elbow as they stood and led him away, leaving Nil and Crowley alone. Nil waited until she was sure they were both out of earshot.</p><p>“So, obviously we can’t let him go back, right?”</p><p>“Uh?” Crowley replied, in a manner that suggested he was still distracted by his own fuming about the idea of a universe where Malphas had taken credit for the M25.</p><p>“This poor fluffy idiot,” Nil clarified, gesturing at where Crawleigh had been sitting a moment ago, “we can’t let him go back to his own universe, or dimension, or whatever the fuck.”</p><p>“He’s not some lost puppy we found on the side of the road.”</p><p>“He kind of is, though,” said Nil. Crowley mumbled some inarticulate nonsense sounds, which Nil took as a concession and continued. “Are we seriously gonna send him back to his universe, where he’s gotta deal with his human existence, and his junker car, and a competent Hastur, and ranked bastards stealing every occasional evil idea he does have, and nobody in his corner? You’re gonna let that happen to what is essentially yourself? We’re demons, not <em> monsters</em>.”</p><p>In a display of utterly unmitigated gall and dickheadery, Crowley put his chin in his hands and let that same shit-eating grin from before crawl across his face.</p><p>“Awfully <em> considerate </em> of you,” he said. </p><p>“Oh, go fuck yourself with that.”</p><p>“Nil,” Crowley smirked, “you like him, don’t you, y’big softy?” Nil assumed a facial expression that was definitely a frown and not a pout because she was very serious.</p><p>“Fine, I can stand him. Don’t go spreading that around or nothin’,” she said. “I got a total lack of reputation to maintain.”</p><p>“Who’d listen to me, anyway? I’m an unkillable psychopath, remember?”</p><p>“You know that’s an upgrade, right?” Nil slouched backward, miraculously avoiding knocking over anything on the table behind her. “Almost made everybody forget what a goddamn teacher's pet you were.”</p><p>“Nngh,” Crowley noised, with a lackluster snarl in her general direction. “Anyway, what are you consulting with me for? He’s a fully grown humanoid abomination just like either of us. It’s up to him whether he goes or stays, isn't it?”</p><p>“Yeah, well,” Nil rolled her eyes, “it’s pretty fuckin’ apparent that he’s made some very stupid choices when they’re all left to his discretion.”</p><p>“The beat-up Citroen, for a start,” muttered Crowley. “Are you asking me to tempt him into staying?”</p><p>“No,” Nil said, firmly, “I’m saying somebody should actually offer him some decent advice for what’s possibly the first time in his life, and see how he does with it.” She thought a bit, and then added, “Though if you think it’ll make the difference, I’m also not saying <em> not </em> to tempt him.” </p><p>“If he's as human as he says he is, he'd be just as susceptible to the occult bit as any other human,” said Crowley, consideringly.</p><p>“Eh, I don't think we need to go as far as the occult bit.” Particularly after Nil had specifically told Crawleigh he could trust her, she wasn't super keen on manually overriding his judgement. “Just regular old-fashioned talking him into it'll probably suffice. You're good at that, should be fine.” She studiously ignored Crowley’s preening grin and bit down on her instinct to shout at him that an observation of fact wasn’t the same as a compliment.</p><p>“You know, there’s another factor at play here,” Crowley said, after a moment of basking. “You don’t know that Aziraphale didn’t delve into the archives while you were gone, looking for a proper solution.”</p><p>“Well, did he?”</p><p>“Nah, he spent the entire time rearranging the dust bunnies and going, ‘oh dear,’” Crowley answered, as though <em> he </em> of course had spent the whole time cool as a cucumber, “but still.”</p><p>“I don’t think Aziraphale’s gonna wanna send him back either,” Nil said, mostly thinking out loud at this point. “He’s such a muffin.”</p><p>“Who’s a muffin, Crawleigh or Aziraphale?”</p><p>“I — actually, you know, they’re both muffins. But Aziraphale’s a <em> protective </em> muffin.” Nil nodded at her own conclusion.</p><p>Right on cue, Nil heard footsteps approaching the shop floor proper again, and a bit of shuffling and mumbling.</p><p>“Not that I don’t appreciate it,” said Crawleigh as he entered the room, now holding a glass of water he hadn’t had with him before, “but I’d probably have been fine on my own.”</p><p>“Nonsense,” Aziraphale said, hovering after him, “what sort of host would I be if I left you completely unattended?”</p><p>“Well, it’s just, hosts don’t usually wait for their guests outside the bathroom door, in my experience,” Crawleigh said, but he sounded unsure about it now, like he was wondering if maybe every experience he had using someone else’s bathroom had been a subtle slight.</p><p>“Oh.” Aziraphale looked mildly alarmed, and Nil knew, she just <em> knew </em> that this was the face of an angel who now had plans to go back through all his ancient etiquette guides and see what they had to say about the matter. Nil didn’t blame him, though. It seemed entirely possible that Crawleigh might fall into the toilet, or something, left entirely to his own devices. (Was that a thing that could happen? Nil was pretty sure that was a thing she’d heard could happen.)</p><p>“What’s with the souvenir?” Crowley asked, indicating the water glass with a tilt of his head.</p><p>Aziraphale clicked his tongue. “Really, Crowley, don’t be obtuse. Crawleigh can hardly miracle himself sober at the end of the evening.” He glanced back at the glass in Crawleigh’s hand, and then lit up one of those little grins of his, and added, “Completely un-consecrated, no need to worry.” </p><p>So Nil was pretty sure Aziraphale would be on board with keeping Crawleigh around.</p><p>“Ought to slow down anyway,” Crawleigh said, going for a sip of the water. “It’s getting late. And I’ve still got to figure out how to get back home.”</p><p>Nil exchanged surreptitious glances with Crowley, or at least she was pretty sure she did; the glasses made it hard to tell. There was the opening, the moment to slide in with the demonic double-act. Nil decided to go first, to get her toe in the door: she’d have to be cunning and slick, to let Crawleigh think it was his own idea. But, in deciding what to say, her brain got a little tangled up in the <em> made human </em> thing, and the stoats, and the specter of a Hastur who <em> wouldn’t </em>struggle to pour piss out of a boot if it had instructions on the heel.</p><p>“Your universe <em> clearly </em> blows major dicks,” she blurted instead. Oops. Well, as long as she was being direct, she might as well lean into it. “Why would you even wanna go back there?”</p><p>“Subtle, Nil,” said Crowley. Nil shrugged in a decidedly sorry-not-sorry way. “She’s got a point, though.” </p><p>“I'm relieved you said something,” interjected Aziraphale, glancing at Crowley and Nil for a moment before turning right back to Crawleigh. “The very idea of sending you back to that situation,” — he gave a theatrical little shudder and shook his head — “unconscionable.”</p><p>“What are you talking about?” Crawleigh looked at the three of them, one to the other, with an expression that really put the lie to Crowley’s earlier protests that Crawleigh was not some lost puppy they’d found.</p><p>“Look,” Crowley began, somehow lounging more ostentatiously, “I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff you’re good at. You noticed the M25 thing, good job there. You’re a good listener, you're apparently decent at baking. Maybe you can knit, or something. But you seem to be kind of a shit demon.” Crawleigh opened his mouth to protest, but Nil cut him off before he could get anywhere with it.</p><p>“But <em> we </em> have no problem with that!” It was like a good-cop-bad-cop routine, almost, except for the good-bad dichotomy, and the fact that Nil wouldn’t be caught dead deliberately emulating a cop. “You might have noticed, we’re pretty shit at our jobs, too! Did you hear that meaningless garbage I fed Hastur back there?”</p><p>“Hell, I got fired,” Crowley announced proudly.</p><p>“<em>I </em> got fired,” Aziraphale corrected. “<em>You </em>had a tepid bath, if you’ll recall.”</p><p>“What you need,” Nil said, before the two of them could get any further with the banter, “is someone around who’s willing to mitigate your areas of shittiness. You need someone who’ll have your back, and in your case, occasionally your front and sides.” She leaned forward to plant her elbows on her knees and fold her hands just under her chin. “Crawleigh, you need yourself a union rep,” she finished with a grin.</p><p>“What d’you mean, don’t go back?” Crawleigh looked utterly lost, but not unhopeful or displeased at all. Like he was trying to confirm if he was hearing what he thought he was. “Where else would I go?”</p><p>Nil rolled her eyes. “Stay here, stupid.” </p><p>“Not <em> here</em>, of course,” Aziraphale put in, “not the bookshop specifically, I've nowhere to put you.” Which Nil was pretty sure wasn't entirely true, since he clearly had no issue bending the laws of reality around his book collection, but she wasn’t about to call Aziraphale out on it. “It’s important to have a space of your own.” Now that was more like it.</p><p>“Someplace with on-site parking,” Crowley suggested. Crawleigh went wild-eyed, glancing around at the three of them and at the room, like he was looking for hidden cameras.</p><p>“Really?” he said, as though <em> please continue existing in this reality </em> was a level of courtesy he’d never before been extended. “Oh, but, the real estate market being what it is? It’d take a miracle to find a place to —” And, in a stunning display of unspoken cooperation, all three miracle-capable parties at once leveled a smug-yet-sympathetic gaze at Crawleigh.</p><p>“It’s a good thing our respective employers no longer have any say in our miracle performance, then,” said Aziraphale airily, “wouldn’t you say?”</p><p>“Well, Nil’s do, technically,” said Crowley, “but, you know.” </p><p>“Yeah, when Dis freezes over, I’ll worry about getting audited.” Her accounts were pretty well in-order anyway: a lot of her non-work-related miracle use was in the form of summoning rich dudes’ wallets into her pockets. As long as Hell couldn’t see what she was doing with her ill-gotten gains, it just looked like she was working overtime by defrauding corrupt humans. Paying rent for some hapless demon would be functionally the same to Hell as her usual habit of buying things like artificially-flavored liquor and subscriptions to niche porn sites. “Maybe we can land you something a little nicer than a shitty studio, huh?”</p><p>“That’s kind of you to offer,” Crawleigh said, with a sweet, bashful smile.</p><p>Nil grimaced and hollered wordlessly in response, and kicked Crowley in the shin when he started snickering.</p><p>“Really, Nil,” Aziraphale said, badly failing to suppress his own little grin, “the lengths you’ll go to, to tempt someone into skipping work. Dreadful.” She winked and gave a quick thumbs-up.</p><p>“Damn right. Now, since that’s all settled,” Nil grinned, gesturing at the seat Crawleigh had left empty, “how about you tell us what happened with Atlantis?”</p><p>“Oh, you don’t want to hear about all that,” he demurred, like he honestly thought she was going to believe that for a second.</p><p>“Aw, c'mon.” Nil bounced in place a little bit. “Tell you what, we can make it an embarrassing story trade. If you tell us about your Atlantis debacle, I'll tell you about my Woodstock debacle.” Maybe if they were lucky, and the booze kept flowing, they might even get treated to the story of how Crowley got himself perma-banned from Ireland.</p><p>Kind-of-shit demons had to stick together in solidarity, after all.</p>
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